What is it about?
This is a companion article to a research article describing the discovery that the winds in Saturn's equatorial stratosphere switch between blowing eastward and westward on an approximately half Saturn-year cycle, which is approximately a 15 Earth-year cycle.
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Why is it important?
The winds in Earth's equatorial stratosphere have long been known to switch between blowing eastward and westward on an approximately 2 Earth-year cycle, and on Jupiter, a similar switch is seen to take approximately 4 Earth-years. Thus, this switching is a common property of the winds in equatorial stratospheres, and one that affects each planet's global circulation.
Perspectives
This is an example of a repeating meteorological phenomenon that is not tied like a cogwheel to either the day-night or seasonal cycles. Instead, it is the steady upward drift of eastward and westward waves into the stratosphere that dictates how long each eastward and westward phase will last.
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Music of the stratospheres, Nature, May 2008, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/453163a.
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